


Shards Of Ice

by TexMexTwins



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Skating AU, Injury, Romance, figure skating AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 15:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5749303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TexMexTwins/pseuds/TexMexTwins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’d been friends for as long as she could remember, and partners for nearly as long. Who would have thought a freak accident would leave such an impact?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shards Of Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first fic to be posted here on AO3 and also my first for the Miraculous Ladybug fandom, so I'm super excited to post it! I hope you all enjoy! If you'd like to see more, you can find me on Tumblr (Gravity-chan and wordsofthesevenwinds) or fanfiction.net (gravity-chan). Please leave me a note when you finish reading to let me know what you think, thanks! :D

They’d been friends for as long as she could remember.

It was strange, Marinette would muse to herself, how two such different people could create such a strong bond. So little in common, yet they complimented each other so well. He was so kind, so welcoming, that she couldn’t help but gravitate towards him.

If she thought for a little while, she could vaguely remember their first meeting. At eight years old, she had valiantly declared her desire to become a professional figure skater. Her parents had readily agreed, thrilled that she was pursuing an athletic interest.

Adrien Agreste had been in her beginner’s class. “A natural,” his teacher would swoon as she watched his rapid development, “the top of his class.”

Little was to be said about Marinette’s ability. She had very little latent talent, and her balance was, to sugar-coat, a bit underdeveloped. She took more than her fair share of falls and came home with a plethora of bruises each day, but she was determined to get better; it was in her nature. It was, surprisingly, these kinds of situations that caught young Adrien’s attention. After a particularly nasty fall, he approached her, holding out his hands to help her up. “Are you alright?” he asked and, seeing her nod, added, “Don’t worry, I bet you’ll pick it up soon!”

“Easy for you to say,” she had sniffed, wiping away her tears of pain and dusting off her ice-covered pants. “You hardly need any practice at all.”

Adrien had blushed modestly, rubbing the back of his neck in a shy manner; a move he made when he was embarrassed. “Well, everyone needs to practice. Even me,” he had said, his voice soft and his eyes low, and Marinette had hardly noticed the little twinge of something sad in his eyes.

Ever since that day, and for reasons neither of them could understand, they’d been drawn to each other. Marinette had been endlessly shy at first, intimidated by Adrien’s limitless kindness and patience and the way the girls in the class swarmed him, but gradually she had begun to come out of her shell. The two became inseparable. As the years passed, Marinette dropped her shyness around him, was able to let out more of her sass and wit in order to show her true nature.

At the age of fourteen, they began to skate as a pair. Marinette had never skated with a partner before, but she found Adrien’s unfaltering lead to be comforting. She poured her trust into him, so much so that people began to speak of their bond. They would talk about the duo of prodigy skaters, the ones who could pull off the toughest of moves through sheer willpower and coordination. They were completely in sync, the ideal duo.

Marinette was the first to fall in love. It happened slowly, like the rising of the sun. The more she was around Adrien, the more she smiled. He made her feel like she was someone worth loving.

Adrien’s fall was much less subtle. He fell headfirst into love with Marinette, like a switch had flipped inside his brain. All of a sudden, everything about her caught his eye. The way she talked, the way she acted, the subtle things she did that gave away her emotions. He smiled when she was happy, despaired when she was in pain. But he couldn’t tell her any of that. The fear of ruining their friendship was too great. All the hard work they’d put into making their partnership the best, gone to waste because of a slip of the tongue.

He was content just to see her every day.

\---

“Adrien, can I talk to you?”

Adrien glances up, meeting the dazzling blue eyes of his partner. Just the sight of her brings a smile to his face, and he nods, patting the bench beside him before returning to his skates. He was lacing them up, preparing for their practice. “Of course, what do you want to talk about?”

Marinette hesitates for a second, and Adrien doesn’t miss it. He frowns, his hands stilling for a second before she finally takes the seat beside him. The air is filled with a serious feeling, and it makes him feel unnerved.

“I’ve decided to prepare a solo routine,” Marinette says at last, and Adrien nearly falls off his seat in his shock. His head jerks up, eyes wide in surprise.

“A solo routine?” he repeats, and his mind immediately searches for a time when he could have done her wrong. What had he done to push her away? Had he said something wrong? Had he messed up, done something to betray the trust they’d built up so strongly? He had thought their bond to be unbreakable. “I-I see. So, you don’t want to be my partner anymore?” His voice is low and laced with hurt; his chest squeezes painfully at the thought of losing her, and his hands shake as he ties the laces of his skates, averting her gaze.

Marinette’s own shock is tangible. “Oh course not!” she exclaims, shooting to her feet. “I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it that way at all! Oh God, I already screwed it up.” She groans into her hands, her entire face flushed red with embarrassment. “I still want to be your partner,” she manages to say after a bit of stuttering. “I love doing our routines together, but I just… I wanted to do something that’s all on my own. Something I create, that I execute. That way I won’t feel like-” she cuts herself off immediately, her teeth audibly clicking with the force at which she shuts herself up.

“So you won’t feel like you’re being overlooked?” Adrien guesses, and the bitterness in his voice is tangible. He sighs, picking himself up off the bench and offering her a kind, easy smile. “It’s okay, I understand. You feel like people aren’t noticing you. Honestly, I should have expected this to happen.” Reaching out and taking her hands, he gives them a reassuring squeeze. “I believe in you, Mari. You’re just as good at skating as I am. I bet you’ll knock all the spectators right off their feet when they see you perform!”

Marinette tears her hands from Adrien’s and throws her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. “Thank you,” she murmurs against the back of his neck, and Adrien smiles as he returns her hug. “You’re the best, Adrien. I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.”

And Adrien just nods and fuels her confidence with words of praise and admiration, because how can he not? She’s pursuing something she loves, something she really wants. And he’ll be damned if he doesn’t support her through the whole ordeal.

Because that’s what friends are for, right?

\---

Adrien goes to see her performance, and he’s lying if he says he isn’t just as nervous as she is. She clutches his hand for comfort, and he supplies her with uplifting words in hopes that they’ll give her confidence a jump-start. But she’s shaking, and her eyes keep darting between him, the audience, and the empty ice rink that lays, uninviting, in front of her. “What if I mess up?” she whispered to him, inching closer to him as they walk. Her shoulder brushes against his, a kind of intimacy that he should expect but is still surprised by.

He hasn’t seen her this worked up in a long time. Squeezing her fingers, interlocked with his, he flashes her one of his signature smiles. “You’ll be great,” he assures. “Your routine is beautiful, I’ve seen it myself. They’re going to love it.”

“I hope so,” she murmurs, her hand reluctantly detangling itself from Adrien’s so she can sit down and lace her skates up. 

Her fingers shake as she does, fumbling over the knots, and Adrien sighs, shaking his head. She was hopeless. “Let me,” he says, getting down on his knees to tie her skates for her. A fond smile appears on his face as he adds, “You’re thinking about it too much. You practiced this routine time and time again, until you didn’t even have to think about it. Even if you forget a move, your body will remember it.” Straightening up again, he grins brightly at her and holds up his fist. “Pound it?”

Marinette’s face is red, but she nods, bumping her fist against his. “Right, thanks for the pep talk,” she whispers, and a bit of her nervousness leaves her.

Sighing softly, he stands up and lets her take the lead, following behind her. He will escort her to the edge of the rink, then go take his own seat with Marinette’s parents. She grips the top of the rink’s door tightly, but some of the fear has gone from her expression, leaving in its place an expression of fierce determination. Adrien smiles; she’ll be fine, he knows it.

When the announcer starts his introduction, Marinette takes an audible breath. Turning to Adrien, she whispers, “This is it.”

Adrien smiles, like he always does when Marinette is nervous, but before he can say anything, Marinette grabs the collar of his shirt and pulls him down, pressing a firm, sweet kiss against his lips. But she’s rushed, and sloppy, and slightly misses her target, her lips catching only the corner of his.

For a moment, he forgets the breath. Her kiss lasts only a fraction of a second, and then she abruptly pulls away, fumbling with the latch on the door as the announcer calls her name. He’s speechless, eyes wide, unable to utter a word as she glides out onto the ice.

The feel of her lips lingers on his for a moment, and then he swallows thickly, his hand moving up to hover over the spot. Did that… really just happen? Marinette kissed him… him! In all the years they’d been partners, he never, ever, would have expected that. Did this mean that she liked him back? Just the thought sent his heart fluttering, and a blush rose to his cheeks.

The sound of Marinette’s music snaps him out of his happy daze, and he remembers Marinette’s parents, waiting for him in the bleachers. Cursing under his breath, he rushes to the bleachers and up the stairs to where Tom and Sabine were sitting, taking his seat beside them with a friendly greeting. Then he turns to watch Marinette, anxious to see her perform.

The music is slow, graceful, winding up and down in a steady crescendo as Marinette glides gracefully across the ice. The beginning of the routine is characteristically simple. She starts out forwards and adds a few basic jumps, simple moves to accompany the slow part of the song. As the music begins to pick up, however, Marinette picks up her pace as well, moving on to harder and harder moves. Her jumps become more perilous, her spins longer, faster and more expressive.

He can hardly take his eyes off her. Her movements were enrapturing, and he notices as the routine goes on that her nervous expression has disappeared, replaced with one of serenity. A smile has taken the place of her frown, a bright one that shows just how much fun she’s having. Adrien can’t help the smile that comes to his own face as he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He lets himself be absorbed in her performance, watching the way her arms rise above her head in a graceful manner as she spins, drawing one foot up so that her legs form a perpendicular line with the ice on which she balances. He doesn’t even realize the sigh he lets out; with a comical grin he realizes that he must look like a lovestruck idiot. Which he is, he muses to himself, grin stretching further.

Marinette’s leg drops back to the ice, her movements poised and practiced as she slides backwards into a toe loop and continues on. Adrien sucks in a breath; this is it, the big finisher. It was the move that had taken Marinette the longest to learn, the one that pushed her skills to the limit. A double Axel; simple from the outside but difficult to execute. A brilliant way to end her routine, keeping the simple theme but with an element of challenge to it.

Adrien tenses as he sees her lean down, the wind-up for her jump. She crouches, her arms flicking out behind her for momentum before snapping out in front of her as she leaps, her skates clearing the ice in the highest jump Adrien has ever seen her do. He leans forward in his seat in anticipation as he counts the turns in his head; One, two, two and a half, and then the landing, just as she had practiced with him so many times.

The sickening crack that fills the rink nearly makes Adrien’s heart stop beating. Marinette lets out a sharp scream as her ankle gives out from beneath her, her body crumpling onto the ice. She immediately curls up, hugging her knee to her chest, and Adrien is on his feet in an instant, eyes widening in horror.

Beside him, Sabine gasps and makes a move to stand up, but Adrien is already moving. “Marinette!” he yells, desperately hoping she responds to his calls. Ignoring the clamor of people around him, Adrien runs to the fence that separates the ice from dry ground and vaults it, not bothering to even find a door. His shoes slide on the slick surface of the ice, and for a frightening moment Adrien worries he might fall himself, but he steadies himself on the wall before scrambling towards Marinette. When he reaches her, he drops to his knees, sliding to her side and immediately grasping her shoulder so that he can see her face. “Marinette, are you alright?!”

He starts as he notices the tears pouring down her face, and his heart clenches in his chest as worry surges through him. Marinette didn’t cry when she fell down. She cried when she was sad, and sometimes when she was frustrated, but never from simply falling down. “Marinette!” he exclaims once more, his worry spiking as he wrestles an arm under her back and hauls her body up so she can lean against him.

“H-Hurts,” she whimpers, her teeth clenched and eyes stuck shut. It’s then that he notices her knee; black and blue and definitely not bent at the right angle, the sight makes his stomach spin and his legs turn to mush.

“Oh, Lord,” he whispers, feeling sick to his stomach. Something is very, very wrong, and he’s too panicked to figure out what. Lifting his head, he spots Tom and Sabine watching him from the rink’s fence, both of them looking just as alarmed, if not more. “Call 911!” he yells, and Sabine immediately pulls out her phone.

Taking a deep breath, Adrien forces himself to calm down, to think rationally. Marinette trembles in his arms, so much that he starts to fear she might go into shock from all the pain she’s feeling. Her eyes are shut tight, her breaths coming in frantic gasps. He needs to get her off the ice. Fighting to keep his balance on the slippery surface of the ice, he hoists her into his arms. She cries out in pain as her knee is moved, and he forces himself not to put her right back down, fighting back his fear of hurting her. It’s for the best, he thinks to himself, but every step he takes puts her in more pain, and every whimper and hiss that leaves her mouth is a scar on his heart.

It seems like an eternity before he’s able to reach the door to the rink, and a miracle he doesn’t fall on the way there. The staff are shooing people out of the rink, leaving him and Marinette alone with Marinette’s parents.

At Adrien’s request, Sabine goes to the front to wait for the ambulance to come, and Tom disappears into the back room to find anything soft that he can lay Marinette on. Adrien sits on the bleachers as he waits, smoothing Marinette’s sweat-slick bangs away from her face and murmuring comforting words to her as he does. “Everything will be okay,” he promises, squeezing her hand tightly in his.

Her mouth move as if to speak, but no words leave her lips, her teeth chattering too much for her to form coherent sentences. Adrien cradles her head against his chest, his mouth and nose pressed against her forehead as he rocks her back and forth, hoping the motion will sooth some of her panic.

Tom returns with a pile of blankets, and Adrien helps him to lay her down on the floor, careful not to move her injured knee as he props bunched-up blankets below it for support. Marinette’s hand clutches his like a vice, and he kneels on the floor beside her, stroking her hair.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was supposed to be Marinette’s debut, her chance to show how she was special! He had promised her that it would end up alright! “I’m sorry,” he whispers, head hanging as he presses the back of her hand against his forehead. “I’m sorry, so, so sorry.”

When the paramedics come with the gurney to move Marinette into the ambulance, Adrien is reluctant to let her go. Sabine comforts him by wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and Tom leads the way behind the paramedics so the three of them can ride in the back of the ambulance along with Marinette.

By the time they’re allowed to board the ambulance, Marinette has already been stabilized with anesthetics and hooked up to a heart monitor, the frantic beating of her heart slowing audibly as the monitor’s beeps fill the small space. Adrien sits close to Sabine, her arm still around his shoulders, offering him motherly comfort. Now that he is not needed to comfort Marinette, he breaks down, his head falling into his hands as he cries. “I promised her,” he sobs, “I promised she would do great. I promised…”

Sabine rubs his back gently as he cries, all his worry and stress pouring out of him as the beeping of Marinette’s heart monitor slows to a steady rhythm. “You did everything you could,” Sabine assures him, her hand moving from his back to his head as she gently strokes his hair.

The motion is soothing, but a simple action cannot take away the pain and guilt that Adrien feels. Even when his tears are dried up, he keeps his head down, finding small amounts of comfort in Sabine’s maternal actions. When the ambulance arrives at the hospital and Marinette in unloaded and taken to the Emergency Room, Adrien stays with her parents, adamantly refusing to leave until he knows that she’s alright.

Minutes turn to an hour of sitting in the waiting room before news finally comes of Marinette’s condition. It comes in the form of a nurse, the one assigned to care for her. She’d dislocated her knee; a bad landing after that jump, they’d told them. Too much pressure put on the joint, so much that it snapped right out of its socket. It was a bad one, too; there had been extensive damage to her joint and the muscles surrounding it, enough that it would hinder her ability to move it for at least a few weeks.

The nurse explains that the joint would have to be put back in place, and that it would take only a few minutes to do so. After that, she would have to stay in the hospital overnight, under anesthetics for the soreness left over. Luckily, no surgery would be needed. “She refuses to let us touch her knee, and keeps asking for an ‘Adrien Agreste’,” she reports. “We’re trying our best, but we think it may be best for her is Adrien Agreste were to come to her. His name seems to hold a lot of meaning with her.”

Adrien blinks in surprise, glancing at Tom and Sabine. Sabine nods her head, nudging him out of his chair. He clears his throat. “Um, that’s me,” he says, and the nurse smiles. He hates the way she smiles, like everything is okay, like his best friend, his partner, isn’t in a huge amount of pain.

“Please come with me,” the nurse says, and Adrien swallows before doing as she asks, casting one last glance at Sabine to see her patient smile before he enters Marinette’s hospital room.

It’s bright, fluorescent white lights illuminating every inch of the room. It’s almost too bright, the light reflecting off the pure whiteness of the entire room and making the whole place shine unnaturally. Adrien wraps his arms around himself, unable to help the shiver that runs down his spine. He hates hospitals, hates them with a burning passion.

“If it’s not too much for you, would you sit with her and keep her calm while we set her knee?” the nurse asks. The smile has fallen from her face, and her eyes are filled with concern, a sudden change that Adrien isn’t sure if he likes.

He nods immediately, without thinking. The nurse persists, “She’ll be in a lot of pain during the process. Are you sure you can handle it?”

His eyes flick to where Marinette is lying. Her forehead is slick with sweat, her hands clutching the bed’s pure white sheets tightly in her hand. Her leg is laid straight, but it has swollen significantly larger since he last saw, and he bites his lip. “If it’ll help her, then I’ll do anything,” he says. The nurse smiles and nods, gesturing to a stool situated beside Marinette’s bed before moving to help the doctor prepare Marinette’s leg.

Adrien carefully disengages Marinette’s hand from the bedsheets and holds it between both of his own. “I’m here, Mari. Everything is going to be okay, I-” he cuts himself off before he can continue. The words ‘I promise’ linger on his tongue, but he can’t bring himself to say them. Not after what had happened the last time. “I’ll protect you,” he says instead, his voice lowering to a near whisper.

“Adrien,” Marinette moans, her voice still thick with pain. Her eyes are open but glazed over, her gaze far away. “I-It hurts… so much.”

Adrien sucks in a breath, feeling his heart clench painfully. “I know,” he replies, and the crack in his voice displays his emotional turmoil. Taking a moment, he stills his nerves. “It’s okay. The doctors are going to fix your knee, and then you’ll be all better.” He glances at said doctors for confirmation, but none of them are paying him any mind, focusing on the task at hand.

“Get ready,” she nurse says, gripping Marinette’s thigh lightly as she prepares to reconnect the joint. “One, two, three!”

A screams rips itself from Marinette’s throat as a loud click fills the room, and her previously motionless leg jerks in response to the sudden stimulus. Her hand crushes Adrien’s, but he just squeezes it tighter in response, offering her whatever comfort he can. His heart breaks to hear her screams of pain even as they fade to whimpers, the majority of her pain already past, and he resists the urge to break down and cry again right there and then. Tears sting the corners of his eyes, and he grits his teeth as her cries of pain cease and her breathing begins to even out once more.

The nurse smiles and lavishes Marinette with praise at enduring her pain. “She’ll be alright now,” the nurse assures. “Her knee may swell up a bit more, but after that it should go down fast. She’ll have to wear a splint for a few weeks starting tomorrow, but after that she should be good as new.”

“Will she be able to skate again?” Adrien asks, suddenly desperate to know what would happen to her. “Skating is her life! If she can’t do that anymore-”

“Don’t worry,” the nurse interrupts with a small chuckle. “Once her knee is fully healed, she should be able to go back to skating just as well as before. But until then, no skating! She has to take it easy until she makes a full recovery, or she could hurt herself further.”

Adrien nods, relieved, and the nurse and the rest of the doctors excuse themselves to leave Marinette and Adrien in peace. Her frantic breathing settles to a normal pace once again, her racing heart stabilizing and her grip on his hand loosening substantially. Reaching out to brush her bangs from her face, Adrien whispers, “Mari? Are you awake?”

A tiny nod is the only response that Adrien gets to his question. She turns her head to the side and opens her eyes, blinking a few times. She looks tired, her eyes heavy and her grip weak. “I-I messed up, didn’t I?” she mourns in a soft voice. “I messed up the jump, the one I worked so hard on…”

“There will be other routines,” Adrien insists. “It was just a freak accident. It wasn’t anything you could control. You’d done that move dozens of times before.”

Marinette sniffs, and Adrien realizes with horror that she’s crying. “I’m sorry,” she manages to say between sobs. “I let you down. I’m not good enough to be your partner. I-”

Adrien doesn’t let her finish her lamenting. He leans over her and shuts her up by pressing his lips firmly against hers, cutting off her words before she can say them. Unlike their first kiss, this one lingers as Adrien’s hand rests on her shoulder for support and he leans down further, deepening the kiss. Marinette’s gasp is swallowed up as she instinctively melts into the kiss, her eyes falling shut as her hands snake up, one resting on Adrien’s shoulder and the other curling into his hair.

After a long, blissful moment, Adrien breaks away, allowing an inch of space to grow between them. His hands clutch the bedsheets at Marinette’s side, and he rests his forehead against her collarbone. His arms shake and he takes a deep breath, exhaling softly against her skin. “Please, don’t say anything else,” he pleads, voice shaking with the weight of his emotions. “Just… let me stay here like this for a little while.”

Marinette’s gaze softens, and her hand strokes his head idly. Her eyes flutter closed, enjoying the blissful moment as the gentle lull of machinery fills the silence. She nods her head , her fingers brushing against the nape of his neck as she breathes a silent response.

“Okay.”


End file.
